For US Soccer fans, the man in front is Gooch. Aside from poor player faces, FIFA World Cup 2010 is awesome!
I haven’t bought a sports game for three years or so (I think it was Madden 2006 for the Wii, and that was more to try out the controls), so it might seem pretty out of character for me to be checking out FIFA World Cup 2010, the official video game of the 2010 World Cup. I’m actually a sports fanatic, it’s sports video games I’m not too big a fan of. But with the US poised to make a halfway decent showing in the world’s game this year, I’ve got World Cup fever and I decided to pick the game up after trying the demo. The game is a blast, and although I don’t know enough about sports games these days to review it, I definitely can give my impressions for anyone interested in checking it out.
The Beautiful Game
FIFA WC 2010 is tons of fun and looks great on the screen. With a few simple button presses you execute moves on the field that take years to master and it looks amazing. I’ll never forget the goal I scored with a back heel off a low cross in injury time in a group stage game – I literally ran around the living room doing a celebration dance. (It would have been a perfect moment had my wife not been standing there with her arms crossed…judging me.) The game is tons of fun at any difficulty level, and over the course of a few weeks I’ve slowly moved up from amateur to semi-pro to professional level. I’m not sure how far I’ll keep pushing, but it’s fun to play and I feel like I’m improving.
In FIFA WC 2010, you can take any team through the entire World Cup tournament, starting from qualifying or just starting at the World Cup Finals. If you start in the Finals, you need to use one of the 32 teams that qualified, if you play through qualifying you can play as any of almost 200 teams. It’s an impressive roster and an added bonus is you can learn all the flags that you never learned in elementary school! It’s awesome to follow a team all the way through qualifying to the final, but it’s also a bit disappointing that the game doesn’t include a “simulate match” feature, meaning you have to play through every single game including friendlies. The only way around it is to forfeit, and even that requires that you start the game. Unfortunate.
You can also create your own player and “captain your country”, which involves you playing as only one guy throughout the entire campaign. There are also other modes that let you play through scenarios that happened in real life (score two goals in the last two minutes to win, for example), which are a neat edition. And of course you can participate in the online World Cup, but I tend to avoid that in order to avoid major frustrations. For me, the bread and butter of this game is just playing in the tournament with a team, it’s kinda silly but it feels thrilling to win the World Cup. The presentation, voice commentary, and music do a good job of ratcheting up the drama to an appropriate level. According to my simulations, the good old US of A will win the 2010 World Cup. HUZZAH!
The Real Deal
From the design of the menus to the fonts to the soundtrack, FIFA WC 2010 screams authenticity. This is the first ever World Cup to be hosted by an African nation, and the menus do a great job of capitalizing on that. The music tracks are great and feature some African beats, there is the sound of the vuvuzelas coming from the crowds (they basically sound like bees buzzing), and the stadiums are faithfully reconstructed. This even extends to the qualifying matches, you can tell the difference between a soccer poor nation’s stadium and a soccer rich one. Playing against Gambia is very different than playing against England in Wembley. These little touches really help to add to the experiences.
Another authentic feeling is the sound in the stadium and the player reactions when a goal is scored. You can customize your celebrations, but really, all I want to see my player do when he scores a goal is run madly around the pitch and into the arms of a teammate. And run they do. There is also the look of dejection on the losing team, and the commentary by the announcers, which isn’t amazing, but remains solid throughout and doesn’t take you out of the action.
One negative about the presentation is the player faces. Even a few years ago, players on the screen looked like their real life counterparts, but I’m not sure about this game. Obviously I am most familiar with the American players, but they all look off. Some of their skin tones aren’t even correct, which is a travesty in my mind (and borderline racist). I know they had to do player models for 198 countries or whatever, but they could have taken a little more time to get the stars to look right. I guess this is where you counter with the fact that no US player is really a star, but still, EA is an American company. Come on.
Not enough build up in the midfield
There are also a few other nagging issues. Instant replays are only about 5 seconds long, which is kind of ridiculous. Soccer is a beautiful sport and it takes a lot of passes to create a goal, but the replays are not nearly long enough to see this. I remember in ESPN 2k5 (best football game ever) I could practically replay the entire game, so these replays feel super short. It’s a disappointment.
Also disappointing is the fact that the game doesn’t make it clear what’s needed for qualifying in the different regions. A lot of the fun of a soccer tournament is doing the calculations to figure out exactly what each team needs to do to advance in the tournament, except you don’t really know what you need to do to advance so you can’t do the calculations! I’ve found myself looking up the tournament qualification on wikipedia, but EA could have made it a lot easier.
Put it in the back of the net – again and again
FIFA WC 2010 is a game that’s tough to put down. Like any sports game, it can get pretty repetitive, but it’s fun repetition. No two games play out the same way, and soccer is such an involved sport that there are tons of new techniques you can throw into the game. I still haven’t mastered all of the basic moves, let alone some of the advanced ones. And it’s a great game to unwind with after a long day, I just flip it on, play 4 minute halves, and have some fun. Sure it can be frustrating when the computer scores at the last second to beat you, but it’s exhilarating when you pull off the same move. Supposedly the FIFA series is one of the best sports games out there period, and I can definitely believe it. I highly recommend checking this game out if you love soccer or are interested in playing a fun sports game. I find myself wanting to play it more than the Halo Reach beta, which is not an indictment of the beta at all. It’s just with the World Cup coming up, I’ve got soccer on the brain, and the long and short of it is that FIFA World Cup 2010 is just flat out fun. GOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!
